Discover inspiring, practical ways your board can make its meetings become opportunities for deepening faith, developing leadership, and church renewal.
Since its inception, the Alban Institute has earned a reputation as a leader in addressing congregational conflict management issues through its research, consulting services, educational events, and particularly its publications.
"e;Today we are awash in computerized Bible games, pastoral care software, and church management systems with members' personal information and giving records,"e; observe authors Spiegel, Armstrong, and Bill, but "e;too often we blindly accept and use technology without asking the big questions.
A congregation communicates its heart and soul through words, photos, actions, programs, architecture, decor, the arts, and countless other aspects of congregational life.
Twenty years after Critical Moment of Ministry was first published, Loren Mead returns to his groundbreaking work on one of the most important times in a congregation's life-the time between one pastor's leaving and another's arrival.
Many congregations are experiencing significant change both within and beyond their walls, and both members and leaders feel a sense of loss in the midst of these changes.
Lillian Daniel shares how her congregation re-appropriated the practice of testimony one Lenten season, a practice that would eventually revitalize their worship and transform their congregational culture.
Not only do new church starts in significant numbers bring systemic change and renewal to mainline denominations, but new church development brings similar change to individual aging congregations in their vicinity.
The church year is often seen as a framework for church programs, but well-known Alban author Charles Olsen shows readers how it can be a prism through which congregations more deeply understand their own stories.
Mead presents five key challenges facing today's churches-and how they represent opportunities for the evolutionary, transformative changes he believes must take place in congregations if the church is to remain a viable institution into the twenty-first century.
Vibrant worship services, argues creative and provocative author Graham Standish, are those in which the congregation obviously asks questions such as: Does our worship help people experience God?
Roy Oswald, who ministers to pastors with great compassion, perceptiveness, and skill, now brings eight more years of field experience to an updated edition of "e;New Beginnings.
Clergy, worship or music committees, organists, and choir or music directors will find this a practical and invaluable guide to the role and power of music to express and form faith.
A constructive theology and ethics of money in the Christian life, this series addition is by James Hudnut-Beumler, dean and associate professor of religion and culture at Columbia Theological Seminary, and deals with vital questions.
Even as so-called megachurches capture the attention of many church watchers, small congregations continue to dominate America's religious landscape in both rural and urban settings.
As spiritual guides, clergy and lay leaders alike often find themselves in need of direction about how to make changes in their personal life and ministry.
Used successfully in Episcopal dioceses and congregations, Total Ministry describes a new way for local congregations (especially small ones) and judicatories to organize their response to God's call and to provide resources, support, and encouragement for ministry-a way that is not dependent only on full-time, seminary-trained, ordained leaders.
Nationally known for his work and teaching on clergy development, Oswald integrates research and experience into a liberating perspective on the pastoral calling.
More than Money is a wondrous journey to 11 congregations across the United States that have been transformed by living out stewardship that is more than fundraising.
Although spiritual growth occurs within an individual, Ware explains that it is the calling of the congregation to be a community of support and encouragement.
Known as "e;the internship guy"e; at Dallas Theological Seminary where he teaches, George Hillman talks daily with students about God's movement in their lives.
A large and growing number of congregations are setting up church-based nonprofit organizations in order to operate community development or educational programs.
